


A Game The Whole Family Can Play

by applegnat



Category: Kaminey (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-18
Updated: 2009-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:39:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applegnat/pseuds/applegnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months are a long time to be away: she's missed Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Eid, and Rosh Hashanah, and those are just the family celebrations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game The Whole Family Can Play

**Author's Note:**

> It is Diwali, I wrote Diwali!fic set in the future. I don't know if it'll make sense outside my head, but I hope it does. Regardless, happy Diwali to one and all.

There had been a time in her extreme childhood when the new airport – it had only been around for the last sixteen years – looked cavernous to her eyes, but it has a homely feel to it this time around. The Diwali rush engulfs it, displaying to full effect the capacity of a crowd in Mumbai to make any public space, no matter how accommodating, resemble a tin of sardines. Deputy Superintendent (Special Task Force) Meenakshi Sharma jostles her way through the baggage lines, armoured in mufti and bubbling over with the excited gratitude of the returning native. Three months are a long time to be away: she's missed Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Eid, and Rosh Hashanah, and those are just the family celebrations. She's been to some of the strangest and most beautiful places in the country, and combined the compulsive habits of a workaholic with the success rate of a moderately lucky gambler – she's come up just temporarily short of crucial evidence, and that only because one of her suspects cleaned up and ran out on her with unexpected and anonymous help. In spite of it, she knows, and the department knows, that she's earned this homecoming. For now.

As always, Baba has planned to meet her at the airport. As always, when she finds his face in the crowd at the arrivals area, it turns out to be Charlie-kaka, in a discreetly expensive suit – he started to dress well about five years ago, which was around the time Meenakshi turned old enough to figure out which of his myriad of business associates were also his boyfriends. He'd been doing rather a lot of business in Italy at the time. She's never disappointed to meet him. His hugs are fierce and full of concern, in that repressed, slightly neurotic way that both he and Baba have in common; and he never, ever asks her about her work.

"Your father isn't dead, don't worry," he says, as he holds her now. "Some idiot down in his office set himself on fire lighting a sparkler. A fucking sparkler, I am not joking you. He had to go hold his hand in the ambulance."

"You're an old sweetie, Kaka," she smiles. "You really didn't have to come." He raises his eyebrows over his Armani shades.

"Are you kidding?" he says. "And let you ride down with all these bags in a _train_, when you have to be home before sundown? No, don't say a word, you're just like your father. The two of you need your heads checked."

"Public transport is environmentally responsible," she protests feebly, as he drops her bags into the trunk of his car. He never travels with a chauffeur.

"Bloody Panvel," he grumbles. "When I was your age the airports used to be decently located in the middle of the city."

"I'm amazed you didn't bring your helicopter," she says. He laughs as they head out in the direction of the sea bridge. "Is Kaki back from Hong Kong?"

"Did she tell you she was going?" he asks, evenly. Meenakshi takes a moment to respond. Since her aunt Sofia – Kaka's ex-wife and permanent housemate – always calls from untraceable numbers and sends emails from fiendishly well-disguised IPs, Meenakshi supposes the fairest thing to say would be that Kaki _implied_ that she was in Hong Kong.

"...came back on Wednesday at three in the morning," Kaka is saying, without waiting for her answer. "Went straight into the bathroom and started to clean up outwards from there. For Diwali, she says. Cow," he adds fondly, under his breath.

For a pair with as much money as they have, Meenakshi's uncle and aunt are scrupulous about cleaning up after themselves. Meenakshi, always so good at asking the right questions, has long stopped wondering why. Every family has its secrets. If it seems strange that a girl from the sort of family that appears to have _more_ secrets than others decided to become a cop, no one has remarked on it yet. No one too important. For now. Meenakshi never thinks about what might happen some day, if a case takes her too close to Charlie's bookkeeping empire. She doesn't ask herself what she will do if someone above her starts to get interested in her anonymous sources, chief among whom is an aunt who practically drawn her a map through through her last six weeks in Goa on the trail of an international drug ring, right up until that miracle escape by one of the girls she was trailing. If Baba, who people in the city have lately started agreeing on as the most honest man in Mumbai, can live with it, then she's not going to complain. She's a good cop, but her uncle is also the man who taught Mouse and her to walk first, and then run. He still runs the Mumbai marathon with her every year, at that. And if Mouse has always been his secret favourite, it's a moot point at the level of Charlie-kaka's affection for them. She doesn't know many other people for whom he would give up half a business day to drive to and from the airport in Panvel.

"The good thing about running a cosmopolitan organisation," he says as they speed down the sea-link towards the south, "is that people take days off in shifts. The shitty thing is that they expect handouts every time a saint sneezes, regardless of whether they believe in his saintliness or not. Or hers. Remember that if you ever decide to start your own company someday, Mini. On Diwali, Eid and Christmas, all your employees are looking to bleed you dry, and if you're stupid they'll try and touch you for Navroze, Guru Nanak Jayanti, and Rosh Hashanah as well."

"It's good for the economy," she says, and they both laugh. "As the honourable Member of Parliament for Mumbai South-Central would say."

"Hopeless," he complains. "Just like your father."

"Who never has money to give anyone, anyway."

"No," Kaka says. "The reason the fool never has any money is _because_ he keeps giving it away."

In spite of his matchless talent for beating traffic jams on the old roads in the city centre, by the time they reach home the puja seems well underway. They leave their shoes in the car and inch towards the doorway of the main courtyard of the wadi. It used to be a slum, before Meenakshi and Mouse were born, but her parents helped rebuild it after a big fire. They made it like the old village-style compounds that came back into vogue after the natural disasters of the 2000s and the implosion of the real-estate mafia that followed some years after. Aai's career started here, decades ago; the same year that she and Baba were married. That happened scant months before the date on Meenakshi and her brother's birth certificates; yet another skeleton in the family closet. They enter quietly, Kaka shielding her from enthusiastic public volunteers nonchalantly and with great success. She can smell the incense and the camphor, feel the heat and smoke from the aarti in her eyes. She sees her mother's back over the heads of the crowd, singing and keeping time with their hands, pushing the space in the yard to its limits.

Sofia-kaki, her greying hair demurely covered with a designer woollen stole, leans against a wall at the back, trying to look respectful and engaged in the proceedings even as she taps away on her smartphone. She looks up as they draw near, and takes a moment to kiss Meenakshi and cup her chin with her free hand – the one with Kaka's diamond on it – as she touch-types with the other. It finds its way shortly into Kaka's hand, and stays there. For two people who married only because she needed a visa, Kaka and Kaki seem to get along fairly well. It's the family secret that needs least airing, at least so far.

Meenakshi turns around and looks towards the gate, trying to find signs of the rest of the family. Eventually she spots Baba as he rounds the corner from behind the big garlanded cutout of Aai that the kids saved from the last election, familiar and dear as always, his left leg dragging slightly after a long and stressful day, the way it has from the time he got shot over the slum redevelopment wars. He lights up at the sight of her.

"Where's your brother?" he whispers, as he folds her into an embrace, warm and smelling like Surf-and-stamp-paper, like Baba always has.

"No clue," she whispers back. "How's your dude with the sparkler burns?"

"Embarrassed," he says, and smiles, and Meenakshi finally feels like she's really come home. "Happy Diwali, Mini. Welcome back. And thank you for coming back in time. Aai and I missed you."

She dries her tears before Aai finishes the aarti, only to disappear promptly under a wave of her party volunteers and the wadi's old residents. The lamps and the plates of sweets start to make their rounds around the crowd, which now swells to scientifically impossible degrees around the food. Baba ushers the four of them sideways into their house. They've lived here all their lives: three rooms and a kitchen, and a verandah where Aai's party workers camp all year round. Her quarters in the Police Colony always feel far too empty when she goes back from here.

"Where _is_ Mickey?" Kaka asks. "He should have been here an hour ago if he caught an afternoon flight from Delhi. Didn't he tell Sweety he would be here this morning?"

"He'll turn up about now," Kaki remarks. "If he knows what's good for him."

As if on cue, they hear the sound of sneakers thumping on the gravel and stone outside the door, just before it opens with a crash. He looks obnoxious, as always. People seem to love that about him. Kaka's eyes soften in spite of himself. Meenakshi's always felt like he got the better deal out of the whole fraternal-twins thing, even if she did get one of Baba's dimples.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry. Happy Diwali, Kaka. Baba. Car broke down on the highway – ew, Kaki, Burberry? Shalom aleichem."

"Save it for your mother," Kaki laughs. "Kiti vel zhala, pora? Don't tell me you were stupid enough to drive down from Delhi."

"Oh, I wasn't in Delhi," he says. "I came up from Goa. Helping a friend who had to move out. Bit of a rush."

Kaki's disarmingly wide, I'm-just-sitting-here-clueless-about-the-undercurrents-of-this-development smile is a family by-word. Meenakshi tries it on, heartbeat frozen, as her twin brother turns to her. They've hated each cordially for as long as they can remember, but it's never stopped them from being friends. Before now.

A roar sounds from behind the curtain before either of them can say anything.

"MIKHAIL SHARMA!" Aai's voice comes like a thunderclap. "IS THIS ANY SORT OF TIME TO COME HOME ON DIWALI?"

Mouse's eyes grow wide and scared. Meenakshi laughs.

"Hi, Aai," she says, and slips out to hug her mother. She tucks her head on her shoulder and lets the diatribe float past over her ears.

"YOUR SISTER HAS A REAL JOB AND _SHE_ TURNED UP ON TIME!" Aai's arms tighten around her before she tries to let go. Meenakshi holds on. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, _BUSINESS_? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, _FRIENDS_? WAIT, ARE YOU TALKING BACK TO ME? ARE YOU REALLY THAT STUPID? LET ME GO, MINI, I NEED TO GET A FISTFUL OF THIS BOY'S EAR. WELL IF YOU INSIST ON BEHAVING LIKE A CHILD THEN I'M GOING TO – OH REALLY? OH IS THAT SO? DID YOU HEAR THAT, GUDDU? WHY DOES EVERYONE SPOIL THIS BOY? AND WHY MUST I WASTE MY INCIDENTALLY EXTREMELY PRECIOUS TIME AND ENERGY ON AN AUSPICIOUS DAY WITH ANGER? WELCOME HOME, MINI, SWEETIE. YOU LOOK SO TIRED. YOU MUST WANT DINNER. GO WASH YOUR HANDS, BOTH OF YOU. YOU TOO, SOFIA AND CHARLIE. I'LL SET THE TABLE. GUDDU," her mother steps back as Meenakshi lets her go, and seems to remember that she has shouted herself out of a cause. "Guddu," she says, "come help. And how is that poor Sameer now?"

 

Mouse lines up behind her at the washbasin, and hands her a towel, looking a little rueful.

"Out of uniform, sis?" he murmurs as he bumps fists with her – more thinkable than a handshake. "I understand you were in the area same time I was. Sorry I didn't call. Pressed for time."

"Your time, your life," she says. "Your business."

"Right," he says. "Likewise, I'm sure."

Diwali is no time for secrets, she thinks. No time to acknowledge their existence, that is. Kaki has gracefully captured Kaka's attention with an email on her phone. They're across the room from Aai, who will try (and succeed) (because succeeding at things is just what Aai does) to keep the world out for a couple of hours this evening to sit down to dinner with her family, the youngest member of whom – he was born six minutes after her – already seems to be smoothing things over by trying to make her smile from a distance.

Baba is looking at Meenakshi, wary and hopeful, like it seems he always has, since he realised that she and Mouse were never going to like each other, any more than they were going to _be_ like each other. Meenakshi shrugs and pretends like she doesn't know what he's thinking about. As secrets go, it's the least important one in the family. For now.

"Likewise," she says.

**Author's Note:**

> Kaka/Kaki – (Marathi) Paternal uncle/aunt.   
> Aai/Baba – (Marathi) Mum/dad.   
> Puja – (several Indian languages) religious service  
> Aarti – (ditto) worship. Generally an aspect of the puja, often conducted with offerings of light, incense, flowers and other good stuff.  
> Wadi – (Marathi) village. Several of these housing and quasi-commercial 19th-century projects still exist in Bombay, little pockets of village eco-systems within the urbs prima Indis. Most exist precariously, a few under the protection of the Heritage Act, all suffused with a great sense of the past and much more environmental and social good karma than the increasingly inorganic housing projects of the last century.   
> Shalom aleichem – (Hebrew) Greetings, peace be upon you, salaam aleikum.  
> Kiti vel zhala, pora? – (Marathi) Roughly equiv. to "Look at the time, kid."
> 
>  
> 
> The Bandra-Worli sea-link already exists. Other sea bridges will presumably make their way on to the landscape in the next three decades barring major administration!fail or civilisation!fail, both of which, let's face it, are never beyond the pale as far as the future is concerned. The metros _should_ be up and running and fairly fast by then, providing ample support to the already existing overland network, but the airport really will be in Panvel, too. Shocking thought.


End file.
